Renowned Researcher Dr. Acevedo-Garcia and Institute for Equity in Child Opportunity & Healthy Development Join BU School of Social Work
Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, PhD, MPA-URP, a renowned researcher of child health equity and social policy, and director of the newly created Institute for Equity in Child Opportunity & Healthy Development (IECOHD), joins Boston University School of Social Work (BUSSW) in January 2025.
IECOHD is a multimillion-dollar research institute and is home to www.diversitydatakids.org, a comprehensive research program and indicator database on racial/ethnic equity in child opportunity and well-being, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Acevedo-Garcia also serves as project director for the program which has developed the Child Opportunity Index, a leading index of neighborhood opportunity, and the Policy Equity Assessment, an analytic tool that integrates racial/ethnic questions into policy analysis. These tools are widely used in research, programs, and policy.
Focused on policy and data for healthy children, families, and communities, IECOHD conducts research on the conditions children need to grow and thrive — with their families, in their neighborhoods, and through local, state, and federal policies. Recognizing that systemic inequities related to where children live lead to unequal healthy development, the Institute monitors the state of equity and well-being in neighborhoods, public policies that support children and families, health, housing, and early childhood care and education.
BUSSW Dean Barbara Jones states, “This is a transformative moment for our school to welcome Dr. Acevedo-Garcia, a renowned equity researcher, and her large, funded research team to join us in our core purpose to ‘dismantle injustice and liberate possibilities’ and our vision to ‘advance a just and compassionate society that promotes health and well-being and the empowerment of all oppressed groups.’”
“I am delighted to join BUSSW. Our team has been working for two decades on understanding and providing research evidence and policy solutions to advance equity in opportunities and healthy outcomes for all children. This work is strongly aligned with BUSSW’s mission, educational programs, scholarship, and applied work. I am especially excited about the great potential for collaboration across BU, always with the goal of making sure all children can achieve healthy development. Our team is so grateful for the wonderful welcome and support we have already received from Dean Barbara Jones and our BUSSW colleagues,” says Dr. Acevedo-Garcia.
Dr. Acevedo-Garcia’s team includes Research Professor Pamela Joshi, PhD; Research Associate Professor Clemens Noelke, PhD; and nine other talented scientists and staff, all dedicated to using data and research to improve children’s lives and increase equity, opportunity, and well-being for children, families, and communities.
Dr. Acevedo-Garcia previously led the Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy (ICYFP) at the Heller School for Policy and Management at Brandeis University since 2012. Her team, now housed at BUSSW as members of IECOHD, is well known for building partnerships with practitioners, policymakers, advocates, and researchers who utilize their data and research to promote conditions for healthy childhoods and advance equity for all children.
While at the Heller School and under Dr. Acevedo-Garcia’s leadership, ICYFP pioneered the use of data to quantify the social determinants of racial/ethnic inequities in health, such as residential segregation, neighborhood inequality, and immigrant exclusions; and the role that social policies such as housing, anti-poverty, and family and medical leave play in reducing those inequities. ICYFP also examined the factors that contribute to the health and well-being of children with special needs.
Dr. Acevedo-Garcia currently serves on the congressionally mandated National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Committee on Federal Policy Impacts on Child Poverty. In 2017-2019, she was a member of the NASEM Committee on Building an Agenda to Reduce the Number of Children in Poverty by Half in 10 Years that produced the 2019 landmark report A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty. She conducts research on policy changes that can help reduce inequities in child poverty, such as the project Including Children of Immigrants in the Post-Pandemic Economic Recovery Efforts and Safety Net — a collaboration with UnidosUS funded by the W.T. Grant and Spencer Foundations — which examined how to correct exclusions that limit access to social programs for children in immigrant families.
Dr. Acevedo-Garcia received her BA in Public Administration from El Colegio de Mexico (Mexico City) and her MPA-URP and PhD in Public Policy with a concentration in Demography from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.